tools for reading the Æneid

if the prose isn’t your flavour or the propaganda feels unbearable, these might be of some use to understand the Æneid on its own terms and make reading the Æneid worth your time. no guarantee though. have compiled this short list from notes taken across two years of studying the Æneid for CAIE and NZQA schol. there’s probably a fair amount of overlap with other resources out there on the internet and editions of the Æneid – haven’t checked.

ideologies

pietās – duty to gods, family, and country. paterfamiliās – the rôle of the patriarch across household, army, and state as leader and responsible person. the patriarch must care for their metaphorical household within paterfamiliās. Augustan moral reforms focused on the family unit, so the Æneid ‘reinforce[s] the assumption that the salvation of society starts with the family’ (A. Wallace‐Hadrill). furor – madness: irrational anger, fury, or lust. actions characterised by furor are categorically bad and reject other ideologies (bar pudor which is complementary). a semantic field of fire is often invoked to convey furor. pudor – shame, especially when that character is aware of their shame. a facet of tragedy, often derived from furor. imperium – power, leadership, control. characterised by:

• dignitās – dignity;
• gravitās – gravity;
• and auctoritās – authority and prestige. iūstitia et clēmentia, primarily from Æneid 7 onwards – justice and clemency. balancing these two against each other and also against necessity. Pāx Rōmāna, Pāx Augusta – Roman Peace is, among other things, conquest by diplomacy (‘speak softly and carry a big stick’). Augustan Peace refers to his moral reforms and the post civil war stability he brought. xenia from the Greek ξενίᾱ xenĭ́ā – that strangers have a right to hospitality, but also the act of hospitality and the rules thereof, including the exchange of gifts and the guest-friendship that results between not just host and hosted but their families. for more information on this, read the Odyssey.

bonus word

īra – Æneas’ wrath in Æneid 10 and 12 (budget τῐ́σῐς tĭ́sĭs).

themes

fātum – Roman Mission is fated and will destroy anything which gets in the way no matter what. tragedy and catharsis – both individual and collective. collective tragedy highlights the brutality and necessity of war as a last recourse after the Pāx Rōmāna fails. intertextuality – both legitimises the Æneid as a poem in the epic tradition and facilitates the blending of myth and history. besides general reference to the syncretised Roman pantheon, there are two main types:

• Homeric – Æneid 1, 3–5 is modelled after the Odyssey and Æneid 6–7, 9–12 is modelled after the Iliad;
• Sophoclean – the model of individual tragedy takes after Σοφοκλῆς Sophoklês, Αἴας Aíās. there are four stages that take place in a Sophoclean hero’s tragedy:

1. giving in to selfish desires (furor);
2. isolation leading to loss of imperium;
3. degradation of reputation resulting in awareness of pudor;
4. the only possible resolution is thus an epic descent into madness.

blending myth and history – as an epic charting the foundation of Rome (particularly Roman values), Virgil connects the mythologised Trojan war to the contemporaneous Rome. this is often done with reference to named geographical places and historical events (looking at you Punic wars and Actium). Virgil’s private and public voices – private voice refers to tragedy, primarily criticism of the brutality of Roman Mission (read as both war and fātum), and public voice to anything blatantly propagandistic. Virgil supported Augustus (see his Georgics 1:498–514) so his private voice is not about undermining Augustus but highlighting the tragedy of civil war and the need to move on. ‘the Æneid is no unthinking panegyric’ (R. D. Williams). necessity – in tandem with fātum. when considering culpability in the Æneid, one cannot overlook the necessity thrust upon each character. the gods – these fickle beings are really just here to drive the other things happening in the Æneid but are characteristically motivated by fickle things like ‘favourite city’ or ‘my son’ but also sometimes fātum.

historical context

‘the Æneid was a response to the centuries of civil war that preceded it’ (George Duckworth) so the historical context is vital making the propaganda worth reading. the Æneid arguably does not stand alone as an epic poem with merits beyond the quality of verse without the background of the civil wars Augustus put an end to. most editions of the Æneid will have a foreword which (if the edition is any good) should outline the historical context. otherwise, read the Wikipedia page for Augustus up to and including the Second Settlement. the most important things to note are arguably, the brutality of the civil war and the manner in which Roman generals requisitioned land to allocate to veterans (see also Virgil’s Eclogues 1 and 9), his moral reforms, the stability he brought to Rome at the end of the war against Mark Antony, and the hope for the future of Rome that he embodies. it goes without saying that Æneas is Augustus Cæsar but often neglected is that Turnus is Mark Antony. note especially Augustus’ framing of the war against Mark Antony as being a war against Egypt and Cleopatra to understand why Turnus is made a sympathetic character. there’s also the fact that the Æneid ‘transformed the old Homeric code into something new and wholly Roman’ (K. W. Gransden) to keep in mind when wondering why all these Greek characters keep getting slandered for their furor behaviour.

after the Æneid, the next logical epic poem in the Western canon to read would be Dante’s Divina Commedia.